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Transcript of Complex Socio-Ecological Dynamics driven by Extreme … · 2013-10-16 · Complex Socio-Ecological...
Complex Socio-Ecological
Dynamics driven by Extreme
Events in the Amazon
Apresentação II Reunião do INCLINE
São Paulo- 7 e 8 outubro 2013
Patricia Pinho
Center for Earth System Science, INPE
São José dos Campos, Brazil
Defining Adaptation…
• An adaptation, also called an adaptive trait, in biology is a trait
with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is
maintained and evolved by means of natural selection.
• Adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to
the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation.
• Adaptations contribute to the fitness and survival of individuals.
• Organisms face a succession of environmental challenges as they
grow and develop and are equipped with an adaptive plasticity as
the phenotype of traits develop in response to the imposed
conditions.
• The developmental norm of reaction for any given trait is essential
to the correction of adaptation as it affords a kind of biological
insurance or resilience to varying environments.
Thinkers of Adaptation
• Lamarck’s is a proto-evolutionary
theory of the inheritance of acquired
traits , whose main purpose is to explain
adaptations by natural means.
• He proposed a tendency for organisms
to become more complex, moving up a
ladder of progress, plus "the influence of
circumstances", usually expressed as
use and disuse. His evolutionary ideas,
and those of Geoffroy, fail because they
cannot be reconciled with heredity.
Darwin broke with the tradition by emphasising
the flaws and limitations which occurred in the
animal and plant worlds.
Many other students of natural history
Before Darwin and Wallace, the concept of adaptation was accepted , and some also accepted evolution, without voicing their opinions as to the mechanism.
The real merit of Darwin and Wallace, and later Bates-> putting forward a mechanism whose significance had only been glimpsed previously.
A century later, experimental field studies and breeding experiments by such as Ford and Dobzhansky produced evidence that natural selection was not only the 'engine' behind adaptation, but was a much stronger force than had previously been thought
• The process of adaptation is never finally complete
• the environment changes little, and the species comes to fit its
surroundings better and better.
• the environment occur relatively rapidly, and then the species
becomes less and less well adapted.
• Seen like this, adaptation is a genetic tracking process, which
goes on all the time, but especially when the population cannot or
does not move to another, less hostile area.
Mayr, Ernst (1982) Freeman, S.; Herron, J.C. (2007).
Some Key Concepts about Adaptation
Adaptation and Environmental Change :
How ? • Discuss here how adaptation has been used on the Global Environmental
Change / Climatic Change forum.
The concepts of resilience, vulnerability, and adaptation are used to
analyze these and similar events. While these concepts are
becoming more important within the global change research
community, they do have diverse and somewhat separate
intellectual histories (Jeansen & Ostrom 2006).
• adaptation in society we need to understand the underlying causes of
vulnerability and mechanisms that enhance or undermine resilience – given
a profound analytical investigation;
– Ethnography
– Surveys
– * index is key to public policy and decision makers -> socioeconomic
development programme;
– the hurricane Katrina (2005)
– the Southeast Asian tsunami
(2004)
– Pakistan earthquake, together
with the bird flu (2005)
– continuing droughts in Africa,
dramatically illustrate the
potential vulnerability of
human society to disturbances
and variability (Jansen &
Ostrom 2009).
International broadcasted Events
all emphasize the importance of including both
social and ecological systems as well as their
mutual interactions when studying their dynamics
Confusions the use of
• socio-ecological systems (Gallopin et al., 1989)
• social–ecological systems (Berkes and Folke, 1998)
• coupled human–environment systems (Turner et al., 2003)
• Ostrom ‘s review socio-ecological system approach (2011)
• “ resilience determines the persistence of relationships within a system and is a measure of the ability of these systems to absorb changes of state variables, driving variables, and parameters, and still persist.’’
Holling (1973, p. 17)
Vulnerability is defined in different ways, but it generally
includes the attributes of persons or groups that
enable them to cope with the impact of disturbances,
like natural hazard -> livelihoods framework (Ribot,
2005; Adger et al. 2009; Scoones 1999)
• Adaptation to environmental variability has been a focus of anthropologists since the early 1900s. In the 1990s, scholars began to use the term adaptation for the study of the consequences of human-induced climatic change, without explicitly relating this back to the conceptual origins in anthropology (e.g., see Adger et al., 2005).
• Adaptation is generally perceived to include an adjustment in social–ecological systems in response to actual, perceived, or expected environmental changes and their impacts.
• Case study analysis tends to be more prominent in this literature than mathematical modeling.
• Problem with Sociobiologists - >
applying concepts borrowed from
Ecology and animals patterns and
interactions to human society- >
• Fitness ; optimal foraging theory,
cost best analysis, etc.
• “Hindus and Westerners alike see
in the meat-eating taboos of India a
triumph of morals over appetite.
This is a dangerous
misrepresentation of cultural
processes. Hindu vegetarianism
was a victory not of spirit over
matter but of reproductive over
productive forces.”Marvin Harris,
Cannibals and Kings: Origins of
Cultures
CO2 Increase Ozone depletion
Northern Hemisphere Temperature increases Number of Climatic Disasters Increase
Anthropogenic evidence of Earth System Alterations over the last
Century …
Steffen, W. et al 2003. IGBP 3rd Synthesis Book “Global Change and the Earth System
Rainfall Vale do Itajaí (2008)
Floodings in theAmazon (2009)
Rainfall São Paulo (2010)
Rainfall Rio de Janeiro (2010)
Rainfall Alagoas (2010)
Rainfalls/Landslides Ilha Grande (2010)
Drought Solimões river (2010)
Storm Agatha Central America (2010)
Drought S. Venezuela (2009)
Intense rainfalls S.Brazil/Uruguai (2009)
Rainfalls/Landslides Andes Central Peru (2009)
Heat Wave Santos (2010)
Some extreme unusual events during 2007-2010- South America
Cold Wave Bolivia (2010)
Floods Colombia (2008)
The Amazon Basin
•Largest Track of Tropical Forest in
the World
•up to 25% of all recognized
terrestrial plant species
• Global Provider of Ecosystem
Services :
•regulating hydrological cycles
•water quality
•nutrient cycling
•biodiversity
•cultural services
(Putz F and M 1993, Putz FE et al. 2008,
Asner et al. 2006, Azevedo-Ramos et al. 2006,
Merry et al. 2006, Menton et al. 2009)
Developmentalists Programme : Agricultural expansion, Markets, Institutional
Arrangements which influence the spatial and temporal patterns of deforestation.
Pristine forest and drivers of socio-ecological change
INPE- Prodes 2010
Climatic and Hydrological Regime
Constant Temperature
around the Year
Interannual Variability
associated with raining
and hydrological Patterns
Rainfall 2460 mmy-1
Drainage Area 6112 000
Km2
Annual Mean Discharge
209 000 (m3s-1)
Tomasella, Pinho et al 2012
The ecosystem: alternation between
aquatic and terrestrial phases.
• Floodplain locally
known as várzea.
• Seasonal alternations of
aquatic and terrestrial
conditions.
The flow of the rivers and the “flood pulse”
• Dictates the ecological patterns
• Human settlement
• Land tenure
• Production (economic activities)
• Social organization
source:
Pinho et al 2012, ; Junk 1997, Lima, 1999.
Hidden Social Dimension
• 30 million people living in the region
• 29 % of the population is indigenous but also rich diversity of other ethnic groups, including Afro-Brazilian communities, traditional inhabitants, and migrants from other regions of the country.
• Income –based poverty, in the Amazon affects up to 42% of the population – whereas for the entire country it is 28.8% (IBGE 2010)
• livelihoods of the poor residing in these areas are highly dependent upon, and sensitive to, changes in the provision of the prevailing ecosystem services.
In normal year, Madeira river reach its
maximum water level 2-3 months before
Rio Negro.
Amazonas
River in
Itacoatiara
(Meade et al. 1991)
The Amazon Basin
Tomasella, Pinho et al 2012
• Severe droughts in Amazonia, like that of 1997 and 2010 are El Niño-related.
• 2005 drought related to the rainfall anomalies over SW Amazonia driven by sea surface temperature anomalies in the Tropical North Atlantic.
• Severe Floods ( 2009 and 2012) associated with La Ninã
•Both Extremes returning in 100 years time !
(Tomasela, Pinho et al 2012)
Extremes in the Amazon
Interannual Variability is increasing -> creating uncertainty
Bigger Peaks
*Decreased minimal flows
*increasing Amplitudes
Pinho, P. , Jose Marengo, and Mark Stafford Smith in review
Severe Droughts
Impact on Local Communities
• High fish mortality
• Isolation
• High mortality of crops
• Difficulty to cultivate subsistence crops (for instance manioc – staple food)
• Lack of clean drinking water
• Transportation
• Health
• Education Solimões River , 2005 Drought
Tomasella, J. P Pinho et al. “ The droughts of 1997 and 2005 in Amazonia:
Floodplain Hydrology and their potential ecological and human impacts” in press at Climatic Change
Extreme Floods : Impact on Local Communities
(urban and rural)
Low Yield return in fisheries -
> Fish spread out during
high water level & difficult
to catch in normal years –
extreme floods it is even
worse.
Difficult to maintain livestock
and husbandry
High mortality of crops
Lack of clean drinking water
Health : incidence of malaria
outbreaks diarrhea
increases specially in
infants and elderly
Infrastructure (houses and
business) destroyed
Source: Folha de Sao Paulo (Maio, 2012)
Local Perceptions and responses about Extremes
Pinho, P. , Jose Marengo, and Mark Stafford Smith in review
Public Policy Responses in Extreme in the
Amazon
• The civil defense are in charge:
– to give technical support and financing reconstruction activities.
– preventive actions
– to evaluate and reduce risks
– readiness for actions as mitigation
– problem solving
– In adverse events to alleviate and reduce human suffering
• The reality for Civil Defense Action in the Amazon:
– Lack of Personal and Capacity at the Municipal Level
– Delay in actions during extreme events
High
Transaction
Costs
Communication
Impact = Delay
in response to
target action
Reduced Transaction
Costs in a Nested
Enterprise
Civil Defense Operationalization in Extreme Events in the Amazon
Governance Levels
Federal
Impacted Remote
Communities
State
Municipal
Risk Evaluation
Pinho, P. , Jose Marengo, and Mark Stafford Smith in review
Governance:
implications for policy and management responses
• Better governance to secure social wellbeing, food and livelihood and natural resources conservation under the uncertainty of extremes.
• The Civil Defense should invest more time and resources in proactive instead of reactive actions in the region.
• The State could collaborate with investing in better roads and transportation , education and establishment of clean drinking water (wells) –all basic needs that should be provided in order to increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of the local inhabitants of the Amazon basin face global/ regional environmental change.
• The actions at the federal and state level needs to be a nested enterprise that would reduce severely the number of people impacted and disrupted by extreme events like this in the Amazon basin.
Implications for Policy and
Conservation strategies
Local communities in the Amazon have over time developed communal rules to
manage and protect natural resources (Pinho et al 2012) -> other examples
include territorial demarcation as ‘indigenous land’ or other types of
protected areas, for instance : Sustainable development reserves,
Extractive Reserves , etc.
As extreme events still reaching them , the tendency is to increase the rural –
urban migration -> leading to urban problems: lack of employment,
education, violence, and food security ;
Large areas of the forest will be abandoned and prone to increase depletion by
large scale agro-business , logging, mining , etc. as governance of the large
scale Amazon is weak and limited on monitoring and enforcement;
Final Remarks
• Local communities in the Amazon are really well adapted to the
interannual variability – and respond very well and in an optimum manner
to this;
• For them , seasons are hydrological and over time have developed skills
and shared knowledge systems to cope with and manage their natural
resources
• As the extreme events are becoming more frequent it is uncertainty that is
increasing the vulnerability of these communities rather variability.
• The Amazonia communities are vulnerable but resilient , however these
extreme events are out of their learned coping range – haven’t
experienced it over their life time.
• Extremes in the Amazon only exacerbates the remoteness of these
communities: from market, basic infrastructure, education, health and
governance.
“…if we can identify the true source of our own desire for an unspoiled natural paradise…we might see not only the richness of life forms but also the experience that exists within Amazonia. Then, we can resist the tendency to dehumanize or erase whole populations and we will be able to respond in a less uniform and effective manner to this world of different people, plants and animals.”
“ Entangled Edens : Visions of the Amazon”: Candace Slater, 2002